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“Popular conceptions of mental illness and psychiatry in the media” – Dr. Hans-Jürgen Wulff/ Kiel

Date: Tuesday, June 20th 2006, 7 pm
Place: Lecture Room of the Landesmuseum

Who deals with questions of the public in psychiatry is primarily confronted with what can, if anything, be called popular conception of mental illness and psychiatry. Which image of and about psychiatry is transported into the everyday understanding of the audience through the medium of film? Are there contra-indications between the communicated image and everyday understanding? And what do these look like? The perceptions of the Psychological and its disturbances and the corresponding image worlds have changed throughout the course of time. For decades Psychiatry was the “snake pit” until confrontation was politicised in the 60s and the “cuckoos nest” appeared as a tool in which social or ideological divergences were brought under control. The sometimes coarse anti-psychiatric attitude of this time stepped back and  since the eighties a large number of films have dealt with mental illness and dementia, disturbances in everyday behaviour or with the romanticisation of “being different”. This contribution will show a brief historic overview and discuss the public image that springs from movies with newer examples at hand.

About the person:

Dr.phil. Hans J. Wulff, born in 1951, is professor for media science at the University of Kiel. After his studies he worked in communal cinema work for eight years and then as a film scientist for twelve years at the FU Berlin. He works on questions about the psychology of films, television and communicative structures of audiovisual communication. Next to countless essays he has written books about the topics of the presentation of violence in the media, film and psychiatry, tension research and semiotics of film. Wulff is the co-publisher of the “Montage”, AV and head of the online-project “Encyclopaedia of film terms.



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